A 'bananas' order for 5,000 obscure titles from a bookshop in Galway fuels suspicion
A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion
Independent booksellers across Europe are receiving massive orders for obscure titles, sparking fears that tech companies are using them to train AI. A Galway bookshop got an order for 5,000 books, while Berlin dealers see orders worth up to €50,000. Suspicions point to AI firms like Anthropic, which settled a copyright lawsuit for $1.5 billion after scanning books. German booksellers believe bots are buying books with ISBNs to feed large language models, despite legal and ethical concerns.
“For me the intention here is to fragment human thinking even further,” he said, “to make people question even more their critical thinking abilities.”